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<title>of flower vases and broken pottery by nutellamuffin</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25759720">of flower vases and broken pottery</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutellamuffin/pseuds/nutellamuffin'>nutellamuffin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Death, Drabble, and artemis is exhausted but loves her brother, and hates to see him so sad, and he couldn't save him and hates himself for it, apollo is a wreck, blood tw, but can you blame him</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:02:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>518</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25759720</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutellamuffin/pseuds/nutellamuffin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>there is blood. there is so much blood.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Apollo/Hyacinthus (Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>83</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>of flower vases and broken pottery</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>there is blood. there is so much blood; blood on his hands from trying to stop it, blood on his tunic for holding a limp body close, blood in his hair from pressing his forehead to a chest with a still heart inside and willing it to beat again. </span>
  <span>blood on his lips, tears mixing with the red, throat raw from screaming. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>apollo has since stopped screaming, everything around him dulling to nothing. he can’t hear the birds chirping in the forest not too far away, the animals rustling through the bushes. he can’t feel the dampness of his own tunic, wet with the salt of crying and the bittersweet of bleeding.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>he ignores the wind blowing his curls around, he'd long since cursed it and the one who was behind it. </span>
  <em>
    <span>he'll kill him. he'll kill him for this. </span>
  </em>
  <span>he would've cried again then, screamed, cursed the clouds, but he doesn’t. he can’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>how can you yell at the world when you cannot feel it?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>artemis does not know when her brother has stopped eating, and thinks it a miracle he does not need to do so. the air inside of whatever room he has locked himself in has gone stale, the sheets sun-bleached and a wrinkled mess from him laying in bed, wrapped up in them. but never sleeping. not a wink.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>every time he closes his eyes, he is there, holding a dead body, looking down at his blood-stained clothes merging with the ones of his lost lover. sleep caused dreams and dreams were memories and oh, how apollo hates to remember.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>he is as much of a wreck as she’s ever seen him, and that is saying a lot for having a poet as a brother.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“i am not much of a god, am i?” he asks, hoarse, and his voice is supposed to be melodically honey-sweet, bouncing off the walls like a harp’s tune would and blessing your ears just to be in its presence. but not now. now it is empty, like a broken string, and there is no echo. there is only a type of rawness that artemis has never seen, not even in his truest sonnets.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>she opens her mouth to answer when he goes on, and she does not have the strength to interrupt him. “i see him everywhere, sister. all because i could not let him go.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>it comes to her slowly, and then all at once, how much he is truly destroyed. among the smashed pottery on the floor, the books and papers strewn every which way, there are hyacinths. hundreds of them. bunches of the indigo flowers, stuffed into mason jars and cups alike filled with water.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“apollo.” she says his name with a new softness, a new understanding. “it was not your fault.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“he bled against my fingers and i could not stop it,” he replies, and she notices how the room is not warm as it always was, warm as a room could be with him in it. it is cold. and so is he.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“what kind of a god does that make me?”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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